Bristol Water is banning hosepipes for the first time in over 50 years. The ban takes effect at 00:01 on Thursday, August 27, 2026, and will affect more than 1.2 million customers across the region, according to ITV News West Country. Here’s why it happened, who’s exempt, and what you can and can’t do with … Read more
Dolly Parton died August 25, 2026, at age 80, at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, surrounded by loved ones. The news, announced by her nephew in a video she’d asked him to record years earlier, triggered a nationwide flag-lowering order and a wave of tributes that crossed nearly every political and cultural line in America. … Read more
At about 2 a.m. on Sunday, August 23, 2026, phones across greater Tokyo lit up with emergency earthquake alerts. Seconds later, a magnitude 5.9 quake centered in southern Ibaraki Prefecture — roughly 60–70 km northeast of central Tokyo and about 70 km deep — sent shaking across the capital region. The Japan Meteorological Agency recorded … Read more
President Trump announced on Truth Social on Wednesday 12 August 2026 that Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary since the start of his second term, will leave the role at the end of the month. She becomes, at 28, the youngest person ever to hold the job — and now one of the shortest-serving … Read more
Update (as of mid/late August 2026): The death toll from the August 10, 2026 earthquake has risen significantly. According to official figures from Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) and later reports, more than 300 people have been confirmed dead, with hundreds still reported missing. Over 4,000 people were injured. Regarded as one … Read more
Five weeks after the Supreme Court struck down his first attempt, President Trump was back in the Oval Office on Thursday 6 August 2026, signing two new executive orders on birthright citizenship. “We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright,” he said. “So we’re making adjustments.” Why did Trump sign new … Read more
On 1 August 2026, the US State Department did something it does rarely: it singled out one city inside a country for its own separate risk rating. Ceuta went to Level 3 — Reconsider Travel. The rest of Spain stayed at Level 2. If you have a trip to Spain booked, or you are just … Read more
Ceuta, a tiny Spanish autonomous city on the North African coast, occupies one of the most geopolitically complex spots on Earth. Perched directly across the Strait of Gibraltar and sharing a 6.4-kilometer (4-mile) land border with Morocco, Ceuta—along with its sister city Melilla—represents the only physical land border between the European Union and the African … Read more
On 31 July 2026, Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni said Spain should be excluded from the Schengen area after tens of thousands of people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco. She called the images shocking and said Italy was ready to act, including by suspending the Schengen agreement with Spain. Searches for “Schengen” spiked immediately. The … Read more
Updated 8 August 2026: the confirmed death toll has risen to at least 100, Spain and Italy are locked in a genuine diplomatic standoff over Italy’s continued border checks, and a separate crisis has emerged over unaccompanied migrant children still in Ceuta. On 30 and 31 July 2026, tens of thousands of people crossed one … Read more